Thursday, May 27, 2010

Planting at the New House

I keep meaning to take photos when I go to the new house to water the seedlings. Without fail I forget. So you get a photoless update which isn't as fun, but so much has been happening there.

I have one long bed by the driveway that I'm using for this year's garden. It has a little rock wall in front of it. The builder filled it with rocks and then two inches of top soil. So I had to pay a fortune to remove it all and replace it with real top soil. We tried finding someone on Craig's List that wanted the rock fill, but no luck. I don't know what he expected anyone to grow in there with two inches of top soil. Maybe crab grass. Even if I were planting bushes or perennials there I would have had to haul out most of those rocks.

The bed is about 2 1/2-3' deep. In the back there was weirdness again. The level of the neighbors yard is about 6" higher than in our bed. So I shored up the soil with some 2"x8"x16 concrete blocks set into the soil on end in one part and on the side in the other. This will keep their soil from falling in and also keep their grass from invading. Why didn't the landscaper do it right? Why didn't they make the soil in both yards the same height? Or at least put a little retaining wall in. There was a reason when we bought the place we told them to stop the landscaping immediately. Everything they did was wrong. Even my front walk. Every landscape designer that we interviewed said there should be a step in our front walk so we wouldn't slip on the ice in the winter, but no he put a sloping brick path instead.

Well enough complaining. And onto the vegetables. Last Thursday I started preparing the bed. I fertilized and turned over the soil. I planted 14 tomatoes, all different varieties. Maybe I should just make a list of the rest: 6 varieties of pepper (cayenne, Big Chili II, early jalapeno, serrano, sweet cherry, California Wonder), six varieties of beans all of which are dried beans except Kentucky Wonder (Trail of Tears, Ottawa Cranberry, Kentucky Wonder, Black Coco, Red Kidney, Tiger's Eye from Dan), Waltham Butternut Squash, Costata Romanesca zucchini, cilantro, flat leaf parsley, basil, cumin, dill, Diamant cucumbers, Ruby Chard, Verde Puebla tomatillos, marigolds and nasturtiums. The bed has about 200 sqft of planting space.

Needless to say it took me a while. I mostly got it all done in three days and it took about nine hours of work in the broiling heat. I drank a lot of water. This bed will be very hot. It is right next to the driveway and the wall just absorbs the heat of the sun. I'm hoping the tomatoes do well here since it will be very very hot. Since then I've been going over there every day to water. Sadly some of the cumin is dying. Even watering once a day wasn't enough for it. We have been having a heat wave and those little tiny plants got all dried out. Usually this time of year we are in the low 70s, but we have been in the low 90s the last couple of days. This really feels like the middle of summer to me. I wonder what July has in store for us. If it is temperatures in the 100s I'm moving to Canada.

Oh and to the rest of the new house yard. We hired a landscape designer and have been working with her. We have the hardscape plan pretty much finalized and it is going to to bid. Things are probably going to start sometime in July.

After being forced out of the garden by days of cold rain, yesterday it turned July heatwave here too. Boo! Maybe an inverted water bottle by your cumin would help it? Or a clay pot sunk nearby, filled and covered? Looking forward to pictures from the new garden!

Daphne, you get that camera and tie it around your neck...or around something! We need pictures, girlfriend. Sounds like a great tomato/pepper bed, with all the heat it will get. How about sending just a little bit of your hot weather over to me? Yesterday we got intermittent rain and warm sunshine, and I think the corn grew six inches. Today is cloudy, lots of rain predicted, with no sunshine.

Oh boy do I know your frustrations with incompetent landscapers. But enough of that. I wish you would send just a little of that heat and sun my way, we've barely gotten out of the mid 60s here for the last few weeks and we've had pissy irritating showers that only annoy and don't water anything.

Fourteen tomatoes and 6 varieties of beans! Wow, you're going to be showing off some great harvests this summer. I'm looking forward to seeing some pictures also.

Good luck with the tigers eye! Mine are starting to form buds already after planting the starts out. Can't wait for all the different beans this year. Its been really hot here as well the last week or so. High 80s-low 90's, they say the whole summer will be hot. At least it has not been very humid yet, that's the worst.

You really turned on my imagination Daphne. I hope you will figure out all the concerns about your backyard. Keep up your excitement and soon post some pictures of your garden for us. I'm looking forward to see them.

About Me

I've been gardening for almost three decades now, ever since my husband and I bought our first house. Every garden has been different. The first was small and the soil was almost pure sand. The second was larger and I had heavy clay. The third and current one which is just outside of Boston, is by far the largest even though the lot is by far the smallest. Since we bought the house new, we designed the landscaping ourselves, and the soil we added was fairly good. My challenge here is the location. We are so close to our neighbors that their houses can shade the garden.